


Indignity

by subwaywall



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bullying, Cruelty, Embarrassment, F/M, Forgiveness, Gen, Hogwarts, Marauders' Era, POV Severus Snape, Poverty, Sacrifice, Self-Hatred, Slytherin, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-02
Updated: 2017-08-02
Packaged: 2018-12-10 09:27:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11688786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subwaywall/pseuds/subwaywall
Summary: Severus Snape has a flash of insight.





	Indignity

He grits his teeth and smothers the nausea that wracks him. One foot in front of the other, he makes his way, stepping carefully on the drier parts of the grass. He’s almost to the library; when he gets there, it will all be fine. If he gets there. 

His mind is a box, he thinks. He clears everything out of the box and the nothingness in front of him hums. If he can just make it to the library without thinking anymore. 

He’s not like the other Slytherins; their parents taught them how to stand up straight. They taught them which fork to use at a fancy dinner party, and how to tie a tie, and how to command respect. How to smile just so. Severus, with his greasy hair and secondhand robes, has had no such advantage. 

Everything he is he has created out of nothing. He’s invented spells, become the best potions student in recent history, and improved potions that his classmates couldn’t dream of creating. 

James Potter hates him because--well, that wasn’t quite clear. Maybe it was Lily; maybe it was Severus’s tattered robes; maybe it was the way Severus’s upper lip curled when he was concentrating. It didn’t matter anymore. 

Of all things there were to fear, Severus fears only one: indignity. James had known that; somehow destroyed him with it. Severus had seen the look on Lily’s face when James flicked him up, up, up and over until he--

He can’t help seeing that look, over and over, in the minutes previous. 

He can’t think of it, or anything, he just smooths down his robes again and walked forward, long steps that are braver than he feels. 

He goes to the library because there is no one there; because Lily will not look for him after Severus called her a mudblood. She wouldn’t understand how this time was unbearable, was worse than every other time put together. It wasn’t because Lily saw. It was the humiliation--

The humiliation that has never left Severus alone. It’s a mark on his forehead, that he does not belong here--he will never belong here. James Potter makes sure of it. Sirius Black makes sure of it. The Slytherins that don’t talk to him because of his old robes make sure of it. 

He is too much to be in Gryffindor and not enough to be in Slytherin. He wonders why Slytherin chose him, anyway. If he were that cunning, that resourceful, he could make it all stop. It makes sense he’s not in Gryffindor, though. All he does is run away. 

He’s too opinionated, too narrow minded, too arrogant, and too snobbish. He’s too quiet, too secretive, too isolated, to be anything. 

He sits down in his normal seat at the library. He likes it because it’s isolated, and colder than the rest of the library, and the light that comes through the window is far above his head. 

He unboxes a tiny portion of his mind, and thoughts flow through it like sand. 

He is a duality, a prince of muggles and a peasant of wizards. He wonders why his mother named him Severus. He wonders why his mother married his father. He wonders why he was born. 

He opens his potions book. Property of the Half-Blood Prince, he writes. He hopes snidely that someone at Hogwarts finds it--much later, of course--and thinks they happened upon the book of a real prince. He hopes they like his annotations. 

He tosses the book down again and clenches his fingers together to make a fist. It feels foreign, as if the fist doesn’t fit him. He releases it again. Severus is not an angry person. He is hurt, and there are sores on him that won’t close. But the anger in that moment drifts away.

He sets his upper lip into a stubborn line. He will not be undignified. He will act worthy of a prince. He will--He will not let them know that they have hurt him. They will think his mind is elsewhere when they torment him. 

He boxes up the anger and decides to save it for when he needs it. 

Lily’s face floods him and now that his anger is gone he knows that he has hurt her. He has called her something unforgivable, and she should not forgive him. He must not hate her for it. She is just a girl, one with a spirit that is light and a tongue that is sharp, one with the heart of a hurricane. 

He is a swamp. An interesting swamp, he grants himself. But not complicated, just rays of emotion that are clear and intense and a box that he puts each one in. 

Severus’s face does not move. He considers that it is perhaps a great tragedy to know that he has lost her, and there is nothing to be done but get up and keep going. There is no time to mourn. 

She could not have loved him, he sees. There is hope in her yet, and Severus is all practicality. The good in him is her. It will last him for a long while, he thinks. 

He will apologize to her, and she will not accept. And their roads will diverge; she will forget him. And Severus will never be the same.


End file.
